I do not say that all is rosy in the Labor party but hell if I had (which I have) to choose between two devils, I'd go with the one less likely to shoot me.

The proportion of politicians trying hard to improve the social standing of people is far greater in the Labor party than in the Libs (conservative) party, though these latter ones lie about it in using the "charitable" stick to hit you with... As well it's a question of tactics... The Libs have one tactic: let the horse loose, flog it silly and run and run, enjoying the wind in the hair while it lasts — and run and run... until the beast dies... Hence the Global Financial Crisis... At least, the Labor Party with all its fault will manage the horse, change horses at the relay and sing a song when stopping at a waterhole...

Sure, they're all a bit smelly and in need of a shower, but at the moment we've only got two drovers — one drongo leading a bunch of raggedy old silly goats and one lass who's herding a disparate cattle of catholics, duffers, old left-wings, dreaming rite-wings, tall-tale tellers and accountants. It's the best we can do... 

I believe it's for us to make suggestion for improvements rather that shoot the horse...

Hi Gus.

It's just as Frank Zappa said ...

The curtains are gone, the set is dismantled & all we see is the brick wall at the back of the theatre ... all the players came from the same troupe & whilst they may have looked different, they were all engaged in perpetrating the same illusion on the audience.

As far as I'm concerned, being willing to support someone, simply because they are the lesser of two evils, is a cop-out & that is at the heart of what Tanner is saying.

And yes, of course it's been said before, but the problem is that nothing has been done about it ,,, by Gillard, Carr, Swan, Shorten or any of Labor's so-called luminaries, simply because they are comfortable with the way it is or they don't know how, or both, & the problem of salvaging the party will be left to some other poor bastard in the future.

Tanner is trying to wake people up to the fact that change will only come about if their is an imperative & it's up to the leadership of the Labor Party to create that imperative ... if they can't, they should fuck-off & let someone who really cares have a go.

Bring on the revolution!!

Cheers,

John.

Yes John... I am in favor of storming the Bastille...

So what do we want?...

Less money for the bosses, more for the workers? Stability of employment? Cake? Happiness in a sauce bottle? Get rid of Gina? Less god, more good? More freedom? How do we achieve this? Does Tanner know? If he did, he should have stayed in parliament and should have fought like hell to get us there but, by and large, he's a whimp with sour grapes on his plate...

And we need to kill off the commercial media in all its evil anesthetic forms, to have the revolution... Big huge enormous task here... We're getting there...

Thanks to the Hamster Wheel...

Good news Gus.

But we need to be careful here ... if it's not acceptable for Tanner to have an opinion, then surely it's equally unacceptable for any politician, bureaucrat, diplomat, miltary-type, billionaire, business person, journalist, sportsperson, do-gooder or ordinary citizen to have one either, once they've 'moved-on' ... or is it only 'unacceptable' for those whose opinions we don't share?

In my experience, sour grapes is a dish that we all enjoy from time-to-time.

Cheers,

John.

This story concerns events involving the town of Cessnock, though for the purposes of this column it could be called Cesspit.

If Australians knew how much the democratic process was being colonised and occupied by a self-perpetuating political class there would be more than the usual cynicism about politics. We're now seeing outbursts of disgust from inside the machines.

Two years ago, Lindsay Tanner was a Labor federal minister. Soon after the sudden and violent elevation of his factional rival Julia Gillard into the top job, Tanner pulled the pin on elected politics. Now comes his essay, Politics Without Purpose, a bleak title that captures his portrayal of the Labor Party as a moral husk.

Much the same could be said of the NSW Liberal Party. At a recent meeting of the NSW state parliamentary party, a series of members lodged complaints about the way the party state executive was routinely abusing its special powers to conduct factional warfare and exclude the rank and file of the party. The NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, called it ''abuse''. A similar complaint was made by another minister, Chris Hartcher. Two other MPs, David Clarke and Chris Spence, spoke out against the misuse of emergency powers by the party machinery.

So, too, did a judge of the NSW Supreme Court last week, when Justice William Nicholas repudiated both the legal arguments and the moral rationalisations put to him by counsel for the NSW Liberal Party.

Justice Nicholas ordered the party to stop quashing an attempt at structural reform by having members choose candidates for office via plebiscite rather than the existing arcane machinery.

The special powers have been invoked at least 100 times in the past year, occasionally out of necessity but in most cases for factional advantage, which brings us to the example of Cessnock. Historically it is a mining town and thus a one-party town: Labor. The Liberals had no party infrastructure in Cessnock.

Last month, the president of the NSW Young Liberals, Simon Fontana, a member of the state executive, proposed a motion to set up a Cessnock Hunter Young Liberals branch.

The usual process, laid out in the party's constitution, is that the setting up of a branch is a public event, accompanied by advertisements inviting members of the public to join. This public element was by-passed in Fontana's motion because, he said, the party did not want a repeat of any ructions such as those that had happened at the opening of a Young Liberals branch in Bankstown.

This sounds like a breakdown in the party's faith in its grass roots. Fontana moved that the state executive use its special powers to establish the branch and that the first 10 members to submit successful applications would comprise the branch. The motion was passed. Fontana had a list of 10 completed applications ready.

Fontana, a member of the NSW state executive, is on the staff of the Minister for Family and Community Services, Pru Goward. His career has been spent as a staffer for Liberal politicians.

When I called Fontana he said he could not talk to me about party matters during work hours. He would call after office hours. He said every element of his election, and the setting up of the Cessnock Hunter branch, had been within the rules of the party, and it was an active and successful branch.

I do not question his veracity, but all old-fashioned branch-stacking exercises are conducted within party rules. It is the spirit of the rules that lie in the dust. Branches are created, they become the foundations of delegate empires, these translate into pre-selections, which turn into seats in Parliament, via the party brand.

He disputes this characterisation of events. As for his setting up of the Cessnock Hunter Young Liberals, this was building the base of the party in a now-marginal area. The real pay-off is the two state council delegates that come via the new branch. These will sit on several preselections for the legislative council. The region that includes Cessnock is represented by the Police Minister, Mike Gallacher. Fontana's faction is eying Gallacher's seat.

Having already cost the Coalition two very winnable marginal seats in the 2010 federal election because of factional obsessions, the NSW Liberals are now repeating exactly the same obsessions with the same implications.

At the moment the party is embroiled in the court case over whether to have a referendum into using plebiscites for preselections instead of the current arcane machinery. It will be difficult for a referendum to succeed, and this is not even the main game, which is the constant use, and misuse, of ''special powers''.

There is also the conflict of interest where political lobbyists also serve on the state executive, a conflict self-evident to everyone but the state executive of the NSW Liberal Party.

On the other side of the arena the insularity of the NSW Labor machine eventually translated into electoral disaster.

The Greens have been colonised by hard left ideologues, pushing aside environmentalists, and they, too, paid a heavy price at the recent local government elections.

It was another electoral debacle for the politics of self-absorption.

Welcome To Cesspit, Another Town Sucked Into The Political Machine

Sure, John

One can say anything anytime, including make a poor taste film on Mohammed, and so can I...

My point was not for Tanner not to make comments but to actually have contributed more to the shit fight when he was in the mad house... And my cartoon with the "maybe maybe-not" was my personal study of him... And usually I make sure my sour grapes turn into reasonable red neds...